Conventional search engines operate by indexing, and/or otherwise categorizing or characterizing, large numbers of documents (or other content files) which may potentially be included within search results provided to users in response to search requests from the users. For example, a conventional search engine may have access to an index of documents or other content files, where the index may include a very large number of such content files. Thereafter, the search engine may receive one or more search requests from a user, and may parse or otherwise analyze the search request, for a subsequent comparison of the parsed and/or analyzed search request to content files within the index. Many known techniques exist for correlating the search request with one or more of the indexed content files, to thereby obtain one or more of the content files which are thought to potentially satisfy, and are therefore included in search results of, the search request of the user.
Thus, conventional search engines serve to provide a user with a relatively small set of search results which are identified within the larger index, based on the search request of the user. However, even relatively small sets of search results may be too large for the user to quickly or easily identify a particular document or other content file which includes the specific information desired by the user. Consequently, conventional search engines may be configured to provide the search results in a manner which assists the user in identifying desired information therein.
For example, conventional search engines may rank the search results, and/or may provide quick review information for one or more of the content files of the search results, where such quick review information is designed to assist the user in quickly and easily identifying desired information within the search results. Thus, such quick review information may be designed to assist the user in evaluating individual search results, and may include, e.g., one or more of snippets, summaries, selected and/or representative portions, partial or complete snapshots, or other representations of some or all of the content files of the search results.
In practice, it may be preferable to generate the quick review information prior to receipt of the search request from the user, so as to thereby provide the quick review information as quickly as possible in response to the user's search request. However, as referenced above, an index utilized by a conventional search engine may contain and/or reference a very large number of documents or other content files, so that it may be difficult or time-consuming to pre-generate quick review information for all such content files. Moreover, in practice, it often occurs that only a small fraction of the potential search results indexed by the index of the search engine are likely to be included within actual search results provided to a user. Consequently, generating quick review information for all indexed content files, many of which are unlikely to be included within actual search results, may be inefficient or detrimental with respect to providing fast, accurate search results.
As a result, it may be preferable to generate quick review information only for the subset of indexed content files which are considered to be likely to be included within future search results. However, it may be difficult to optimize a selection of such a subset of the indexed content files, for which generation of quick review information would provide a desired net benefit. Consequently, conventional search engines may generate quick review information either for too many of the indexed content files (thereby using resources inefficiently), or, conversely, may generate quick review information for too few of the indexed content files (thereby being unable to provide necessary or desired quick review information in a sufficiently fast and efficient manner).